There's no single "formula" to a perfect relationship. However, we've studied an awful lot about what successful couples do. Everyone's relationships are a bit different, but we can take away a lot from what we know works.

While a perfect relationship might be beyond the grasp of science, studies on what makes a relationship successful are everywhere. Over the years, these studies have come up with some trends that help us better understand what sets a long lasting relationship apart from one that ends quickly. A lot of this is common sense, but that doesn't mean we don't need the occasional reminder.

Positivity Matters

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It's not surprising that the more positive a person is, the more likely they'll be happy in their relationships. What's interesting is just how much it matters.

In the laboratory as in life, constructive support is generally better for a relationship than detachment, as many people have learned the hard way. Couples who lace their arguments with sarcasm and mean jabs, studies find, are usually headed for a split. But in their analysis of response styles, the researchers found that it was the partners' reactions to their loved ones' victories, small and large, that most strongly predicted the strength of the relationships. Four of the couples had broken up after two months, and the women in these pairs rated their partners' usual response to good news as particularly uninspiring.

Learn to argue better: The purpose of any argument should be a solution, not just a time to yell about everything. This post helps you get to that point quickly.

Stop fighting about money: Fighting about money is a huge problem in relationships and this post helps you get over that and deal with it directly. If you need some more, this post provides some more details on how to manage your finances better as a couple.

Good communication takes effort, it's hard, and it doesn't always go smoothly. But when you let small things fester and don't communicate, problems arise. Studies show that it's usually money that causes this rift, but every relationship has its own set of issues that need to get worked through.

You don't want to spend all your time with one person, and you want other people to talk with so you don't rely on your partner for everything. Author Tara Parker-Pope puts it well in her book For Better:

Dr. Coontz thinks all this togetherness is not necessarily good for couples. The way to strengthen a marriage, she argues, is to put fewer emotional demands on spouses. This doesn't mean losing emotional intimacy with your husband or wife. It just means that married couples have a lot to gain by fostering their relationships with family members and friends. The happiest couples, she says, are those who have interests and support "beyond the twosome.

In one set of experiments, some couples are assigned a mundane task that involves simply walking back and forth across a room. Other couples, however, take part in a more challenging exercise — their wrists and ankles are bound together as they crawl back and forth pushing a ball.

Before and after the exercise, the couples were asked things like, "How bored are you with your current relationship?" The couples who took part in the more challenging and novel activity showed bigger increases in love and satisfaction scores, while couples performing the mundane task showed no meaningful changes.

"The more you invest in fun and friendship and being there for your partner, the happier the relationship will get over time," says Howard Markman, a psychologist who co-directs the university's Center for Marital and Family Studies.

"The correlation between fun and marital happiness is high, and significant."

"The real issue here, I think, is that couples are not finding enough time for sex,'' said Dr. Smith. "I don't think you can keep forcing more and more activities in people's lives and still expect them to take the time it takes to have sex, let alone good-quality sex."

Anthony Lyons, a study co-author and research fellow at La Trobe, said the main lesson from the study is that couples need to learn how to communicate about their sexual needs or their reasons for not wanting sex.

"Couples need to talk about the frequency of sex," Dr. Anthony said in an e-mail. "Talking openly about sex and finding a middle ground with regard to frequency appears to be very important for overall sexual and relationship satisfaction."

It might seem silly to do something like scheduling time for intimacy, but it's important to open up the dialogue about your sex life to dedicate some time to just be with each other.

Don't Be a Selfish Jerk (Obviously)

For every large study about big idea issues like sex, positivity, and whatever else, there's a lot of research into the minutiae of what makes a relationship successful. To sum it up, the bulk of this research is pretty simple: don't be a selfish jerk. Here are just a few things research says you should be doing:

Contribute to the household chores: In a small scale study, UCLA researchers tracked the lives of several relationships over the course of 4 years. Their conclusions? Couple who have a system to handle household chores and who evenly disperse those chores are a lot happier. So, when you're significant other makes the suggestion that you do the dishes now and again, just do it.

Quit gaming your life away: Playing video games is great, and even excessive gaming doesn't have a negative effect on relationships. However, one survey conducted by researchers at Brigham Young found that when gaming upsets routines in a relationship it can cause problems. That means one person is staying up late playing, missing social activities, or whatever else. We're guessing gaming isn't the culprit here though, and the lesson is more that any hobby that consistently upsets your routine is going to cause problems.

Quit hashing out problems over text messages: Technology has a knack for disrupting relationships, but one study pinpointed that couples who deal with fights over text have a lower relationship quality. This means couples who used text messages to apologize or work out differences instead of having face to face conversations tended to report unhappiness. That said, positive texts like the occasional "I love you" are still great, just stop trying to work complicated things out over SMS.

Even out your drinking habits: If you're a heavy drinker and your significant other isn't, chances are you've already had a handful of spats about it. It turns out, studies show that when one person is a heavy drinker and the other isn't, trouble usually follows. The sort of good news? Couples who drink together are just as likely to have a successful relationship as couple who don't drink at all. It's not just drinking either, another study suggests that dissimilarities between spouses about eating and smoking cause similar problems.